


Everybody Knows

by kristophine



Category: Sports Night
Genre: Bisexuality, Exotic Birds, M/M, Pining, male strippers make an appearance, natalie has a plan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-16 17:27:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21039977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kristophine/pseuds/kristophine
Summary: It wasn’t that he didn’t know. Everyoneknew,he thought sometimes; depending on his mood the thought was either bitter and mean, or indulgently affectionate.





	Everybody Knows

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to saathi1013 for beta!

One thing Danny and Casey had in common—and they had a _lot_ in common—was that they both liked television. Not just because they were on it. They liked watching television, they liked watching the news, they liked watching shows, hell, they even enjoyed a good commercial. They watched television when they were hanging out and they watched it on their own. They watched _Cheers_ before it went off the air. They watched _Friends_ on occasion, and late-night reruns of Bruce Lee movies, and Danny had an unfortunate weakness for _Wings_ even though it was terrible. They watched _Unsolved Mysteries _and Casey made fun of the hicks who thought aliens were coming for their cows.

They both liked _The X-Files,_ and part of what Casey remembered, later, about the movie coming out, aside from the fact that it was in the middle of his truly heinous divorce, was that he went to see it with Danny. They went to see the movie on one of their rare days off together, and Casey’s shoulder brushed Danny’s. Danny shifted and took a deep breath. Casey remembered that, later.

It wasn’t that he didn’t _know._ Everyone knew, he thought sometimes; depending on his mood the thought was either bitter and mean, or indulgently affectionate. Everyone knew how Danny—the thing was, Danny wasn’t an understated man. He’d never managed _subtle_ well. And then Danny went head over heels for Rebecca, after the divorce, while Casey was still getting his feet under him again, and Casey looked at him and thought, _Well. That’s what a normal life for Danny looks like._ And it looked good. Rebecca was beautiful, every part of her shining, from her hair to her lips to her limpid eyes. She was accomplished. She was witty and well-read, a polymath with ready comebacks.

If she reminded Casey, from time to time, of himself, he had the good sense to say no such thing out loud.

A few months after the show was bought and sold, Casey and Dan had been jostled into a new equilibrium, repackaged into something different, maybe improved. Casey kept looking at Danny under the studio lights. Because Danny looked better, these days. Danny looked like he was sleeping. He was writing with more skill and aplomb. He was thirty-one. He and Rebecca were off again, after being on again and then off and then on. They might stay off; it had been weeks.

“Danny,” said Casey at the anchor desk, “what’s the best X-Files episode?”

Danny looked up at him, startled. He’d been off in his own head a moment before. Casey knew what the answer would be before Danny opened his mouth, and that lent an odd quality of déjà vu to watching Danny’s lips move.

“Jose Chung’s From Outer Space,” Danny said. “Why?”

“Just checking.”

“Just checking, as in you thought the single best episode of what is unquestionably overall a damn fine series might have changed?”

“Hey, it’s still on the air.”

Danny snorted. “Nominally.”

“Nominally. But I have to agree that Jose Chung’s is the best episode.”

“Of course you do, because I’m right.”

“When you’re right…”

“I’m always right.”

“Sometimes.”

“Usually.”

“I’m not sure I can even give you _often._”

“Give me, nothing.” Danny made as if to throw a pencil at him, although they’d endured enough lectures about _hazards on the set, boys,_ that Casey thought he probably wouldn’t actually throw it, and was vindicated in his decision not to budge.

Danny was grinning at him, though, and Casey found himself grinning back.

Casey cracked his neck. “Let’s watch it again.”

“I can always make time for a classic. Ah, Agent Scully, she of the crimson locks of dubious provenance!”

“Tall words from a man who dated a woman with hair that absolutely came out of a box,” said Natalie into the mic. Danny was clearly about to argue, but then they were coming back from commercial.

After work, Casey pulled the box of tapes out of the closet while Danny talked from the kitchen—a stream of consciousness digression on the subject of Casey’s choice of beers (domestic, obviously inferior) and how bare the refrigerator was (like Danny’s was any better). Danny also had some thoughts on new shows (_The Sopranos,_ Danny thought, was going to be good).

Casey found the tape. He slid it into the VCR, which made the familiar clunk-whirr, the satisfying intake and hiss. Danny settled into his usual spot, sprawled across multiple couch cushions, and Casey threw his arms over the back of the couch. Danny slouched further and drifted closer to Casey over the course of the episode.

They were halfway through Mulder eating a piece of unnecessary pie, and Danny was chuckling, when Casey turned to Danny and kissed him.

Danny froze. His smile was melting away.

Casey gave it a long second and then leaned back, carefully, with the sense that he’d just crashed through ice without considering what was underneath it.

“I, uh,” said Danny. “What?”

Casey shrugged, picking up his almost-empty second beer, trying to ignore the way his stomach was sinking through the floor.

“No, _really,_” said Danny.

“Oh, come on,” said Casey irritably. “Everyone _knows._”

“Knows? Knows what?”

Casey was fairly certain he should stop, but instead, he said, “That you want to—to—” and gestured at himself.

Danny’s eyebrows rose so high they were at real risk of leaving his face altogether. “_What?_”

“Are you trying to tell me you don’t?”

“You _do?_”

“Never mind.”

“I don’t think it works that way,” said Danny. He was drumming his fingers restlessly on his thigh. “What made you—Casey—”

“I said never _mind._”

“It’s been ten years.”

“More than that.”

“And you—”

“I said never mind,” said Casey, although without much hope.

“You want to—” Dan gestured back and forth between them. “Like—”

“I thought _you_ did,” Casey said peevishly.

“And you were just going to, what, put up with it?” Danny looked insulted.

“No.”

“You weren’t going to—”

“It wasn’t going to be _putting up_ with it, Danny, Jesus _Christ._”

“Oh.” Danny’s mouth tightened in thought. “Oh.”

Then Danny went silent, and for a few seconds Casey actually thought, foolishly, that Dan might let it _go._ He should have known. He really, really should have known.

Danny said, “Why does everyone think—?”

Casey leaned his head back against the couch and sighed deeply, put-upon. “I don’t know, Danny.”

“No, there has to be a reason.”

“The way you look at me,” said Casey, who was a little drunk and would use that as an excuse if pressed. “How close we get to each other. You’re always touching me.”

“Yeah, we’re—we’re _friends,_” said Danny unsteadily. He was a little drunk, too. “That’s—we’re _close._”

“We’re close like ivy on a brick wall_._ We’re so close we might as well be married. You sang to me, on air.” Casey heard the accusation in his voice. “You nagged me about our _anniversary._ In front of everyone.”

“You turned down Conan’s show for me.” Danny sounded like he was tasting the words, how they felt in his mouth. “Because—”

“Because we had a good thing going,” said Casey shortly.

“Because of this?” asked Danny. He sounded lost.

“No.”

“You—” Danny ground the heels of his hands into the sockets of his eyes. “You want to sleep with me?”

“No,” said Casey before he could stop himself.

“No?”

“No.”

“But,” said Danny. “You—”

“It’s not about _sleeping_ with you.” Casey became suddenly, furiously aware that his eyes were stinging. He stood up abruptly, with every intention of going to the kitchen, possibly to get another beer.

On screen Mulder was staring soulfully at Scully. Danny caught his arm as he tried to climb past him, the narrow gap between the couch and the coffee table occupied by Danny’s legs.

“_Danny,_” he said, full of embarrassed anger that he could already tell was going to keep him up that night and maybe forever.

“You have a, a whole _thing_ for me.” Danny was looking up at him with an oddly blank face.

Casey rolled his eyes, jerking his arm away. “I’ll get over it.”

“You thought I was—had a thing for you.” He could feel Danny’s eyes boring into his back.

“I was pretty sure, yeah,” Casey said to the refrigerator door as he pulled it open. He wasn’t hiding behind it. Much.

He could hear Danny shifting. He kept his eyes glued to the beer, trying to decide between Killian Red Hook and the classic if terrible Miller.

“I didn’t know,” said Danny, too close to him. Casey closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then opened them and grabbed a Red Hook.

He straightened up, letting the refrigerator door fall shut. “Well, great. Let’s go back to—” and was cut off by Danny’s mouth on his.

Soft, tentative, but _there,_ and he was rigid with anger and embarrassment and despair for a second, and something else, too, that he had no difficulty identifying and no desire to name. Hope had already screwed him over enough times in his life without giving it an engraved invitation.

So he didn’t move. Danny didn’t move. And then, after a long, long moment, Danny _did,_ opening his mouth slightly.

Casey had no idea—was he supposed to—but Danny was, so he did. He opened his mouth, too, and Danny sighed, a bright, high-pitched, wavering sound.

Without entirely meaning to, he found that he’d put his hands on Danny’s forearms, that he was resting his palms against the backs of Danny’s arms. He wasn’t opening his eyes. If he didn’t open his eyes, this wasn’t real, it wasn’t happening, and Danny wasn’t going to walk away from it.

Danny broke off and rested his forehead against Casey’s. Casey left his eyes closed. He could feel Danny’s breath, warm on his cheek.

“I don’t think I can,” said Danny wretchedly.

Casey nodded, which jiggled Danny’s head. He still couldn’t open his eyes. It was easier like this.

“I don’t…” Danny trailed off.

Casey stepped back, slowly, so Danny wouldn’t fall. He turned to the counter before he opened his eyes, and then he put his beer up against the bottle opener and popped the cap.

“So let’s have another and watch the rest of the best episode.” Casey turned back to Danny and handed him the open beer. Danny took it, automatically, from long habit. “Rest of the best, that’s unfortunate, isn’t it? I try not to rhyme on my own time. Oh, God damn it.”

Danny’s lip twitched in what was almost a smile. After Casey grabbed a second beer and sat down, Danny finally moved.

Casey turned up the volume.

On screen, Jose Chung was doing a voiceover. There wasn’t much of the episode left. A couple of minutes.

At the end, there was a bit where a girl yelled at a boy, “Love! Is that all you men think about?” and Casey thought he managed to keep his face still enough.

Dan was staring at the screen, and he kept staring even after Casey hit the power button on the remote control and the picture faded away.

Danny shook himself slightly. “How _do_ I look at you?”

“Never mind.”

“It must be _something,_” Danny said softly, almost to himself. “I don’t—”

“I’m not sure how many times I’m going to have to _tell_ you this, which feels like it defeats the purpose, but I am really ready to stop talking about it.”

“And you just…” Danny propped his elbow on his knee and his chin on his fist, like a cut-rate Rodin’s _Thinker._ “You didn’t say anything.”

“Obviously.”

“Why? If you—and if you thought I—”

“It was never a good time,” Casey said harshly. “I was _married,_ for a _long_ time, and then you had that thing with Rebecca, and I had that thing with Dana, and then the show, and then Rebecca was back again—”

“And you thought now—”

“There was a moment where I thought now might be a good time.” Casey scrubbed at his face with his free hand. He was still holding onto his beer for dear life with the other. “Or at least the closest approximation of a good time that was likely to occur.”

“And you thought,” said Danny, very quietly, and didn’t finish the sentence.

“I did, and now I don’t, and I am very serious about my utter and profound disinterest in talking about this for one more second.”

“I never.” Danny ran a thumbnail under the edge of his bottle’s peeling label. “Not with—”

“Yeah, let’s talk about this _more,_ then.”

“Not once.”

“Good for you.” Casey was snide, and he hated it, but _Jesus._

“Did _you?_” Danny lifted his head and fixed Casey with a piercing stare.

Casey jerked his head away. Took a long, long drink. Finally, he had to answer. “Yeah.”

“Before or after Lisa?” Danny’s brow wrinkled. “Not _during._”

“Of course not _during._” Casey shook his head. “Before.”

“You’re, uh.”

“Close enough.”

Danny seemed to realize he was staring and looked away. It took some of the weight off.

“You should go,” said Casey.

“I—should I?”

“What _else_ do you need to grill me about? This hasn’t been a _fun_ experience, here, Danny, so any time you feel like getting your coat and pretending none of this ever happened would work just fine for me.”

“Oh.” Dan shook his head, blinking. “Yeah, I guess—I wasn’t thinking.”

“I don’t know why that surprises me.”

“Casey—”

“_Go,_” Casey roared, and the stillness that followed the word held all its echoes.

Dan got to his feet, snagged his coat, and left.

The condo felt very empty.

Casey got up, feeling like an old man, feeling years older than his body, and rinsed the beer bottles before chucking them into the recycling bin under the sink.

He did not sleep well.

The next day was tense and uncomfortable, which he’d expected, but they ended up writing a decent script, which he hadn’t. Dan was prone to flinching, and Casey found himself moving extra slowly to avoid it, trying to telegraph his immediate intentions, trying to give Dan plenty of physical space.

Things were almost normal for a whole five days, at which point Jeremy, of all people, solemnly followed him into a supply closet and then jammed a stray office chair under the handle. The chair had at least two working wheels_,_ so it didn’t seem likely to be effective at blocking the door. Casey frowned at it.

“What is happening right now?”

Jeremy pushed his glasses further up his nose with a solemnity that seemed totally at odds with the situation. “Well, there’s a cricket match in Guyana, about which I suspect you’re not actually curious.”

“You’ve got that right,” Casey muttered.

“I have been told I need to apologize to you.”

“What?”

“By Natalie.”

“_For_ what?’

“Certain comments I have made, over the years, which could be interpreted as—insensitive. Okay, look, I wanted to say insensitive but _she_ said I _had_ to say homophobic, which I think could easily be a misnomer, because calling the comments homophobic implicitly suggests that any man who’s attracted to men _can’t_ be attracted to women, when we all know—”

“_Jeremy!”_

“I _told_ her this wasn’t going to go over well,” said Jeremy.

“What are you _doing?_”

“Apologizing.”

“And you think you need to apologize to _me,_ specifically, because—” Casey stopped and drew a deep breath. “Right. Okay. You have to let me out of this closet, _right now,_ because I need to go _kill_ someone.”

“That makes me not want to let you out.”

“Jeremy, whether you like it or not, I am leaving this closet!”

The door opened right as he was yelling that last part, and revealed Kim.

“Oh, you’re leaving the closet?” she said with mild interest.

“_This_ closet. This specific closet, at this moment in time, because—I have reasons!”

She was perfectly straight-faced. “I’m sure you have reasons for leaving the closet.”

“Kim! Look, _someone_ needs to be on my side right now.”

She waggled a finger at him. “Oh, no. I am not getting in the middle of this.” Her eyebrows went up and she smirked. “Unless—”

“No!” He couldn’t be certain, but it felt like the lead-up to a sex joke.

“Then no.”

“Just let me out!”

She stepped back and gestured past herself, grandly. He left the closet at something close to a dead run.

Danny wasn’t in their office. He also wasn’t in Editing, or the conference room. Casey gritted his teeth as he contemplated a journey to Rebecca’s floor; she’d come back to the company, even though it was nominally a different company now.

But before that could become necessary, Natalie found him in the green room.

“Casey!” She thumped him solidly on the back. “Jeremy told me he screwed up his apology.”

“He didn’t _screw it up,_ it was a stupid idea in the first place!”

“No, I don’t think that’s it.”

“I have to say, I think that it is.”

“I think he didn’t do it right.”

“Tell me, Natalie, and tell me the _truth,_ or whatever passes for it inside that nonstop Thunderdome you call a brain. Why? Why are you making Jeremy apologize to me?”

She blinked at him guilelessly. “It seemed like a good time.”

Casey gritted his teeth. “And for what particular _reason,_ pray tell?”

“Pray tell? What is this, Elizabethan England?”

“_Natalie._”

“I can’t tell you.”

“You can’t tell me.”

“That’s correct.”

“But see, here’s the problem with that. I _know_ why. I know what you must have been told, and by whom, and I find it more than a little provoking that you were told anything in the first place. And I am _pissed off_ that you then told _Jeremy,_ with absolutely zero consideration for my position or my privacy.”

Natalie’s lips tightened.

“Natalie,” he said, “I work in _sports._ You cannot—let me emphasize this—you can_not_ take it upon yourself to decide who needs to know what. No one needs to know _anything._”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I have a plan.”

“What? Natalie!” He stood, thunderstruck, as she turned and left, chin held high.

“I said a plan!” she called back.

“No! No, no, no!” He hurried after her, but she dodged into the bullpen and he had no way of continuing the argument without making it unacceptably obvious that they were fighting, which could only breed unfortunate curiosity as to the topic of said argument.

When he got back to their office, Danny still wasn’t there. He didn’t see Danny until the ten o’clock rundown, and by then they had other problems—the feed from California was coming in scrambled and that was going to hose them in the ten block. It didn’t make any sense to try to talk about their other looming problem, which was, after all, not something they could fix with a satellite.

They’d gotten to the anchor desk with less buffer of time than Casey liked, and Casey had just tapped his papers into a neater stack when Natalie swept by the desk at a near-run and slapped a sticky note on top of his pile.

He squinted down at her illegible chicken-scratch handwriting and understood it just as Dan said, “So what’s the deal?”

He snatched the sticky note off, cheeks flaming, and crumpled it in his hand; he jammed it into the pocket of the jeans he was wearing under the table.

It said, in all block capital letters, “TRUST ME.”

“Natalie,” he said pleasantly into his headpiece, “we _really_ need to talk after the show tonight.”

“Only if you can catch me, big guy,” she said.

“Wait, what?” said Dan.

“On in five. Four. Three.”

The show must go on.

After the show, Casey was yanking out his earpiece even as Danny took them to the credits with a pleasant, “So tune in next time for Sports Night on QVN,” and the hot second they were off the air he was up and headed to the control room.

“Casey?” said Danny from behind him. Casey ignored him.

“Natalie!”

She folded her arms and made a face at him. “You’re such a baby.”

“A _baby?_ Natalie—”

“I would like to reiterate that none of this was my fault,” said Jeremy. “I don’t even know what’s going on.”

“What _is_ going on?” asked Dana.

“Nothing!” snapped Casey and took Natalie’s elbow, steering her out of the control room. She let him with relatively good grace.

In the editing room, he said, “I am _serious_ about this, Natalie, this is my career. I take it very seriously. Do not mess it up for me.”

“I _won’t._” Her voice was low, intense; he had to look closer at her, and still wasn’t sure what he was seeing. She looked serious. “Casey. I mean it._ Trust me._”

“Trust you on _what_—” He threw his hands in the air. “You know what, let’s cut the riddles for the next couple of minutes, okay?”

“You’re not the only idiot around here who’s secretly in love.”

He groaned and put one hand on his hip, pinching the bridge of his nose with his other hand. “Wow.”

“You just have to give him _time._”

“Natalie, no offense, but are you a licensed therapist? No? No, I didn’t think so. And for that reason, among _many_ others, I am going to have to ask you to keep your nose _out_ of my business.”

“Oh, Casey,” she said, pityingly. “You know that’s not going to happen.”

“I’m going to murder him for telling you _anything._”

“He asked if I thought he was secretly in love with you.”

“What?” Casey’s head jerked up sharply without his conscious input.

“He said that you said that everyone thought he was.”

Casey flailed ineffectually. “I thought that everyone thought that he was!”

“I told him _I_ thought he was.”

“Hah!” Casey jabbed a finger at her. “See? I wasn’t imagining things!”

“No. You weren’t.”

“I’m not crazy!”

“Oh, I would definitely not go that far.”

Casey deflated, leaning back against the wall. “But it isn’t—it’s not enough. So.”

“You just have to give him time.”

“Time for what?”

“To realize that he’s secretly in love with you.”

Casey choked out a laugh, running a hand over his hair. “Yeah, I don’t think it works like that.”

“Oh, you don’t think so?”

“No.”

“And you’re an expert.”

“Well, no, I—”

“You, Casey McCall, are a veritable wellspring of knowledge about the human heart.”

“See, now it sounds like you’re mocking me.”

“Casey?”

“Yes?”

“That would be because I’m mocking you.”

“Hey!”

She cracked a smile at him. “I’m telling you, you’re clueless. You’re worse than clueless. You need to let me do my work, and then you’ll see.”

“There is no work for you to do.”

“In that, you are mistaken.”

“You can’t _make_ people feel—”

“Of course I can’t, and I wouldn’t try. My mission is only to,” and she made a complicated gesture that looked a little like she was waving to her breasts but he figured that probably wasn’t it, “help people understand what feelings they do have as those feelings bloom.”

“Bloom.”

“Into full flower.”

“I don’t understand why this is my life, and I also don’t like it.”

“Casey, it’s cute that you think that you have a life.”

Casey said, “You understand that this is my career. My entire fucking career. If Jeremy goes around telling people—”

“He won’t. I told him not to this time.”

“Did that help last time?”

“I know where he sleeps, and I told him I’d tell you about his collection of Japanese comics. The erotic kind. The _unsettling_ erotic kind.”

“Natalie. I did not want to know that.”

“No one does, trust me. He’ll keep his mouth shut.”

“I’m surprised he told _you._”

“We tell each other everything. Basically everything. Essentially everything.”

“You’ve never told him about that time with the stop sign, have you?”

“I _panicked,_ Casey, sometimes that happens. The fight or flight reflex—”

“Oh, you’re going to tell me—”

“Just because you—”

“You are a maniac, you know that—”

“He does love you,” she said, and Casey had to look away, compressing his lips together in a hard line.

“I know,” he said. “But he doesn’t, I don’t think he—”

“You think it’s not like that, but it’s like that.”

“Natalie.”

“It is.” She patted his jaw gently. “I promise. Trust me.”

She left the editing room, and he sat on the couch for a while, chin propped on his fist, elbow on the arm of the couch.

Danny came in a bit later, anxious around the edges. “Hey,” he said hesitantly.

“Hey,” said Casey, not moving.

“I, uh.”

“It’s okay.”

“I’m sorry.” Dan perched gingerly on the far arm of the couch.

“I said it’s okay.”

“I needed to talk to _someone,_ and yes, in retrospect, I can certainly see that Natalie might not have been the ideal choice, but she and I have a friendship rooted in mutual respect, my mentorship of her ambitions, of course, and perhaps the slightest touch of fear on my end—”

“It’s all _right,_” said Casey, louder, and Danny subsided.

They sat in more or less tolerable silence for a couple of minutes.

Danny said, “How _do_ I look at you? You never said. I’ve been trying to figure it out.”

“Let’s not do this.”

“I mean, is it the quantity or the quality?”

“Little bit of both,” said Casey, who couldn’t quite help himself, and it came out sharp.

“I didn’t realize I was doing it.”

“Yeah, I got that.”

“You really don’t want to talk about it.”

“That is correct.”

“You want to watch a movie?”

“What, tonight?”

Danny shrugged, lips turning down at the ends like they did when he was trying to seem indifferent about something. Cool Danny. Collected Danny. Casey knew the act. “Sure. Why not?”

“Think I’m just going to go to sleep. Thanks, though.”

Danny nodded, carefully not looking at him.

“We’re not fighting,” Casey added. “You and me.”

Danny shot him a sidelong glance. “We aren’t?”

“We aren’t.”

“Oh.” A small, real, crooked smile on Danny’s mouth, and Casey spared himself a moment’s self-pity.

Dan got to his feet and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’ll, uh, I’ll see you around, then.”

“I’d lay good odds on it.”

Danny nodded, still with that faint smile, and left.

Casey sat there for a while longer before he got up and went home.

Danny was sitting on the couch in their office, feet propped up, crossed at the ankles. Leaning back against one of the arms. His shoes were lying on the floor next to him, tumbled carelessly where he’d toed them off.

Casey looked at him for a minute before Danny registered his presence and lifted his head, craning around to peer over his shoulder.

“Hey,” said Danny with a lopsided smile.

“Hey.” Casey set his coffee down and took off his coat, hanging it on the rack. “How’s it going?”

“Not bad.” Dan waved the book he was holding aloft—Jeremy’s Sports Almanac. “I stole this from his desk. I’m taking bets on how long before he traces it to me.”

“He’ll know by one pm.”

“Ah, but will he?”

“Dan,” said Jeremy, sticking his head in, “I want my almanac back.”

Casey mimed shooting a basketball into a hoop and pumped his arm in victory. Dan rolled his eyes and tossed the book to Jeremy, who half-fumbled it, the pages ruffling as he caught at the spine.

“Oh, hey,” Jeremy added, “Natalie also wanted me to apologize to you, but I figured given how badly things went when I apologized to Casey, I should let the dust settle first.”

Danny waggled his fingers in a benevolent wave. “Consider it forgiven.”

“What? Why do you have to apologize to _him?_” asked Casey indignantly.

“I have made some comments,” said Jeremy. “They were not universally kind or appropriate.”

“Yeah, but I’m the—” Casey stopped and sighed. “Never mind.”

Jeremy nodded briskly. “All right! Apologies achieved. Thank you, gentlemen, and good day.”

Dan peered speculatively after him. “There’s something not quite right about that boy.”

“He’s, what, three years younger than you?”

“Stuff it.”

“I was thinking,” said Casey.

“You should consult your doctor before doing anything like that.”

“You realize Natalie has a plan.”

“Oh, no,” said Dan, with apparently involuntary horror.

“Oh, yes.”

“She can’t be allowed to do that anymore.”

“You tell her that. I don’t think anyone has, or at least not in a way she found sufficiently compelling.”

Dan frowned, drumming his fingers on the back of the couch. “Did she share any of the details of this plan with you?”

“No. She’s going it alone on the criminal masterminding this time.”

“Criminal masterminding? Can you even say that? You’re making a noun into a verb.” Dan tipped his head to one side. “Kinky. I like it.”

The words hung in the air for an awkward minute after Dan said it, and Dan winced a little.

Casey cleared his throat. “Anyway, I thought you should probably be warned.”

“Me? Why do I need warning?”

“It’s a plan about you, I have to assume.” Casey sat up straighter. “Wait, you don’t think it’s a plan about _me,_ do you?”

“Why not?” Dan shrugged. “Maybe she’s going to give you a makeover.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Though you already switched to contacts, so I don’t know that she’s got a lot of room to work.”

Casey rolled his eyes. “Hey, if glasses could work for Mulder—”

“They worked _once,_ maybe twice, don’t go getting ahead of yourself—”

“I switched, Danny, I work in _television,_ I know I test better among women fifteen to thirty-five without them.” Though he still had pairs lying around—one in his desk drawer at work, another in his nightstand at home—for when his eyes got tired, or when he lost a contact, or just because. He thought he looked rather dignified in them.

“Is it because I know women’s shoes?” Dan said suddenly. “I mean, I know most guys don’t, but I pay attention to details.”

Casey squeezed his eyes shut. “Just worry about Natalie’s plan, okay? You’re going to have to head her off somehow.”

“Why do I have to?”

“Because she’s not going to listen to me_._”

“Oh, and she _will_ listen to me?”

Casey laced his hands together behind his head and stared off into space. “See, the thing is,” he said, and the words cost him dearly, “she knows where I am. What I—she doesn’t have any room to wonder. But if you say it enough times, she’ll start to believe you_._ Probably.”

Danny was staring at him with a distressed twist to his mouth.

“I mean, _I_ do,” said Casey. “You just have to convince her_._”

“I’m convincing her of—what, exactly?”

“That you don’t have any feelings she should try to help_ bloom,_” Casey muttered at his computer.

Dan didn’t say anything else. He looked a little green around the gills, which Casey could understand. Being in Natalie’s sights was disconcerting for men made of sterner stuff than television anchors.

That night during their last c-break, Dana said, “Anybody want to get a drink after the show?”

“Yes,” said Casey.

“Anybody besides Casey?”

“Me!” Natalie said brightly.

“Okay, Natalie and I are going drinking. Who else is in?”

“I’ll go,” said Dave.

“Dave, Natalie, and I. Great. Who else is in?”

“Am I not invited?” asked Casey.

“No, you are _not_ invited.”

“Why not, may I ask?”

“Natalie tells me you failed to share.”

“Oh, that is a low blow, Natalie,” he said earnestly to the glass of the control room window. “You have truly sunk to a new low, if you’re coming between me and a cold beer.”

Natalie said, “You either share with me or you suffer, Casey. That is how this works.”

“Somehow I seem to end up doing both, which has to be a rules violation of some kind.”

“It’s a justified penalty.”

“Dana, I take it back. I don’t even want to go for drinks with you and Madame Guillotine here.”

“That’s fine. We’ll use the time to talk about you.”

“You know I love the spotlight.” Casey thought she probably wouldn’t—well, she _said_ she wouldn’t—

Natalie put in, “We’ll discuss at what age we think you’ll lose your hair.”

“Hey!” He reached to touch the back of his head, where he sometimes feared he could feel it thinning. “That’s hitting below the belt.”

“Casey,” said Jeremy very seriously, “would you like to get a drink with me? Natalie is also currently mad at me and it would still be nice to drink.”

“You’re not getting out of the doghouse by going out drinking with someone _else_ in the doghouse!” Natalie said indignantly.

“Do I get to go?” asked Dan with a straight face.

“Yes,” said Natalie.

“Will I regret it?”

“Probably not.”

“Back in three, two—”

Jeremy walked back to their office with them so Casey could get his coat. “I was thinking we still go to Anthony’s, but we sit further away,” said Jeremy.

“Is this because you fear novelty?” asked Dan, grabbing a sweater to throw on over his undershirt.

“I see no need to mess with habit. Habit is comfortable. Comfort is, by definition, desirable.”

“Unless it’s stagnation,” said Dan. “You gotta watch out for that.”

“I don’t mind stagnation, actually.” Jeremy wedged his hands even deeper into the pockets of his coat. “I find that my comfort zone does not particularly need expanding, and I’m okay with being boring.”

Casey sighed, zipping up his leather jacket. “Jeremy, you’re not helping our case here.”

“We have a case?”

“Our case is that our evening will be at least as satisfying as, if not more satisfying than, Natalie’s.”

“Oh.” Jeremy digested that. “What if it isn’t?”

“We still have a responsibility to pretend that it was.”

“Even if we go somewhere new and it sucks?”

“_Especially_ if we go somewhere new and it sucks.”

“Ugh,” said Jeremy feelingly.

“I know. But chin up. If we do it well, Natalie will experience a moment’s doubt of her own judgment, and isn’t that worth something?”

“Not paying too much for bad drinks.”

“Jeremy, we’re going somewhere else. That’s non-negotiable.”

They ended up going to El Perro Fumando, mostly because Jeremy knew it, and getting okay if not exceptional drinks, which they drank slowly because neither of them could be considered a party animal. They talked about sports, which was what they usually talked about, for a good long while. Jeremy insisted on talking about cricket—“I think I almost understand it! See, there’s this zone—” and Casey obstinately refused to believe that any sport would use wider, finer, and _sillier_ as meaningful descriptors. The diagrams got more and more confusing as the night wore on, although Casey couldn’t have said whether that was due to the nature of cricket or Jeremy having had a linearly increasing number of margaritas.

They were sitting in companionable silence, a natural lull in the conversation, when Jeremy slowly dragged his fingertip through the ring of damp his water glass had left on the heavily varnished table and said, “I’m sorry. For what it’s worth.”

“About the close infield? I’m not saying—”

“No,” said Jeremy. “About Dan.”

“Oh.” Casey sat there, feeling foolish, which was not a new sensation and not even a particularly unusual one. In his younger days he’d thought that by thirty-five he might feel differently about the world, but he’d discovered that the primary change had been that he felt tired almost all of the time. He could blame it on the work—it was time-consuming, it was draining—but he thought he would probably still be tired, no matter what. He worked out, he stayed in shape (squash was _not_ a sport for absurdly boring investment bankers, no matter what Dana said), he ate right, and he took vitamins.

He was just… tired.

“For what it’s worth,” said Jeremy, “whatever infinitesimal fragment of worth it may have, coming from me, I also thought he was secretly in love with you.”

Casey couldn’t help the laugh that escaped. It sounded a little wet, like he was coming down with consumption.

“Do you want to talk about it?” asked Jeremy.

“No.”

“Oh, good.” Jeremy pushed his glasses up. “I was not sure I was equal to that conversation.”

“I have been forced to have far too many conversations about this already.”

“Natalie’s like that.”

“I can’t even get shot _down_ in peace around her.” Casey finished off his second beer.

“I think it’s mostly how he’s always _looking_ at you,” mused Jeremy. “When he thinks you aren’t looking. Constantly.”

“We weren’t going to have this conversation, remember?”

“Yeah, I know. I’m just thinking out loud.”

“Don’t do that. If you’re still thinking, you need another margarita.”

Jeremy flagged down the waiter.

“I’m working on it,” said Natalie to him under her breath as she passed him in the bullpen the next day.

“Don’t do that!” he called after her. She didn’t acknowledge him.

When they got back to their office after that night’s show, chatting amiably about the likelihood of a comeback for Karilyn Jones after her fairly spectacular ankle injury, there was a black plastic bag sitting on Danny’s closed laptop.

Danny sighed. “It would be too much to hope that that would be a bomb, wouldn’t it?”

“Knowing Natalie? Yeah.”

Danny picked up the bag and peered in, and then immediately jerked his head back and threw the bag at the couch.

“That good, huh,” said Casey.

“She’s not a fan of sophistication, no.”

“What is it?”

“I’d prefer not to say.”

“So not the _good_ porn.”

“No, it is not. How did you guess?”

“Black plastic bag? It was either a porn store or a gas station, and you don’t get that upset about sunflower seeds and beef jerky.”

“Well, you nailed it in one.” Dan raised a hand to cover his eyes. “That was unintentional.”

“Do you think she just had it lying around, or did she get it specifically for this?”

“To torture me? I’m going to assume it was to torture me.”

“Did you know that Jeremey’s apparently into some kind of weird comic book porn?”

“Did I look like I needed to know that?”

“She’ll get over it,” said Casey. “Things will go back to normal.”

Danny shrugged, still staring at the bag, sitting like a particularly recalcitrant cat on the couch.

They shared a moment of silent contemplation. Casey turned to reach for his coat.

“Do you think about it a lot?” Danny asked.

“What?”

“Men. Do you think about what it would be like to date men again?”

“I didn’t,” Casey said, feeling like he might possibly hyperventilate, “didn’t _date_ them, Danny, Jesus Christ, it was _high school,_ and college, I guess, and that was, it was a _million years ago_ and no, I don’t think about it much.”

“Much.”

“Much,” he echoed, and turned his back to Danny while he zipped up his coat.

“Except for me.” It wasn’t quite a question.

So Casey didn’t answer it. He left.

The thing about Dana was that they had been friends for many, many years, and despite the pain and the frustration of their attempt at dating, she was still his closest friend outside of Danny. And he couldn’t very well talk to Danny _about_ Danny, so that was how he found himself rapping on Dana’s office door with the backs of his knuckles, half-hoping she was already gone.

But she wasn’t; he caught a glimpse of her through the window in the door, bent over her desk. Her voice carried, clear as a bell, through the crack. “Yeah?”

He pushed the door open slowly. Still wearing his coat, ready to leave the building, or maybe have a nervous breakdown instead. He wasn’t in the habit of nervous breakdowns, and felt unprepared for the process. For all he knew, he was already well and truly into one.

“Hey,” he said, leaning against the doorframe.

She glanced up and then blinked at him, her eyes larger through the lenses of her glasses. “What is it?”

“How much did Natalie _really_ tell you about why she’s mad at me?”

Dana pulled off her glasses and let them dangle from her fingers. “Shockingly, she did not tell me much. I know it doesn’t sound like her, but it’s true.”

“It doesn’t sound like her at all.” He eased down into the chair across from her, keeping his hands in his coat pockets.

“She said you and Dan were having some kind of fight. She didn’t say what.”

“And you believed her?”

“I didn’t think much about it. I just assumed it was either the truth or close enough.”

“It’s close enough, I suppose.”

“Casey, are you voluntarily telling me something about this secret fight of yours? Am I prepared for this? Do I need to borrow some of Isaac’s whiskey?”

“If I asked you whether one of us, by which I mean me or Danny, seemed not entirely heterosexual, what would you say?”

“Oh, no.” She pressed the back of her wrist to her mouth. “Did he make a pass at you?”

“See! That’s what I _said,_” said Casey.

“What?”

“I said it was obvious that he was secretly in love with me.”

“And he said… what?”

“That he wasn’t.”

“That doesn’t seem right.”

“It really doesn’t! Thank you!”

“I mean, I don’t know why I’m _surprised_ that it took you over a decade to have that conversation.”

“I don’t enjoy conversations about emotions. I am a manly man. In the mold of Rudyard Kipling and Ernest Hemingway. We have no need for such fleeting and ephemeral—”

“Casey—”

“Yeah.”

“Why did you bring it up?”

Casey studiously toyed with one end of a paperclip chain that Dana had surely made while on a boring phone call. “I made a move on him.”

“Sorry, I think I misheard that.”

“Nope.”

“You—”

“Yeah.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“_Oh._ And he said—”

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh, Casey,” she said.

“It’s _fine._”

“How long have you been sitting on this one?” she asked, with a tender patience he had never earned.

“A while.”

“I’d have to assume.”

“I always thought—I thought I _knew,_” he confided quietly. Almost under his breath. “In the beginning it was different. And then, I suppose I thought there’d be a time. There’d be a time when it would make sense.”

“And you thought it was time.”

“I thought that, yes. It was not, as it turns out, time.”

“Is this why.” She paused and cleared her throat. “Why we didn’t work out?”

“No. I don’t—I don’t think so. I wasn’t—_lying._”

“Okay. Good.”

“I’m an asshole, but not that specific kind of asshole.”

“That’s a little bit of salve for my ego,” she murmured, glancing down, smiling ruefully at herself.

“You’re amazing. Never let some jackass like me tell you otherwise.”

“He gave me a talk about you, you know.”

“What?”

“When you were—when the whole Pixley thing happened. He told me not to sit it out. The game.”

“I’m lost.”

“He told me about how Isaac missed the Giants winning the pennant because he was in the men’s room, and he told me not to do that with you.”

“Well, I should hope you weren’t in the men’s room during any part of our courtship.”

“You’re a dinosaur. What I’m saying is—”

“I know,” said Casey. “I know. He—it’s not like I don’t _know_ he gives a shit, Dana. It’s just not—the way I thought he did.”

“I thought you were a little bit cruel to him,” she said abruptly. “The same way you were to me. I thought you were messing with him. But you weren’t, were you?”

“I wasn’t. Or at least I wasn’t trying to.”

“You poor, big, ridiculous lug.” She patted his arm. “You are _so bad_ at being in love.”

“Hey!”

“I’m not wrong.”

“You’re not wrong.”

“Wow,” she added meditatively, “I was so _very_ wrong about Danny, though. I was _sure_ he was in love with you the whole time. I mean, starting in Phoenix, you know? From day one. I thought he had it _bad_ for you.”

“Turns out we called that one incorrectly.”

“You’re just tired of me saying the word wrong.”

“That, too.”

“You should talk to Natalie about this. If she gets the idea in her head—”

“Oh, the idea has already been gotten. She has grabbed that ball and made a mad dash for the endzone.” He gestured towards an imaginary endzone to illustrate the point.

Dana tutted sadly. “You poor bastard.”

“I’d worry more about Danny, honestly. She already brought him pornography.”

“You’re kidding.”

“You have no idea how deeply I wish I was kidding.”

“Gay pornography?”

“I have to assume. I didn’t ask to see it.”

“I could imagine that being a fraught topic.”

“Indeed.”

“He’s _really_ not in love with you? We’re sure about this?”

“Pretty fucking sure, yeah.” Casey gave a tight shake of his head. “Sorry. I shouldn’t snap at you.”

“I mean, did he _say_ he wasn’t in love with you?”

“Not in those exact words, no, but the sentiment was reasonably clearly expressed.”

“How so?”

Casey carefully inspected the back of one of his hands for nothing in particular. “I kissed him.”

“Oh, honey.”

“He was taken aback.”

“Well, to be fair, he’s seen you make, what, two moves in your lifetime? It’s not exactly a familiar experience for any of us.”

“He wanted to _talk_ about it,” Casey said plaintively.

“I know that must have been very difficult for you.”

“It really wa—hey!”

“Yes, I’m making fun of you. Let’s get that out of the way now.”

“Anyway, the impression I was left with was that he was not interested in pursuing—anything.”

She shrugged. “His loss. You’re a good kisser.”

“I am not sure what to do with that information.”

“You can cherish it in your heart of hearts.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Casey,” she said. “You’re not stupid for thinking he was into you. We all thought that. For waiting so long to find out, maybe, but hey. Now you know. Now you can go on about your business, and you two can get back to being friends, like you and I did, and you’re going to find your someone. Look at the odds. You’re a handsome, intelligent, successful man in Manhattan. If you don’t find someone it’ll be because you locked yourself in an underground vault.”

“Thanks for the pep talk.”

“It wasn’t stupid to make a pass, either. It was brave. You haven’t done a lot of brave things since the divorce. I think it’s great that you did.”

“Dana.” He shook his head harder. She was getting him right where it hurt, like a thorough Swedish massage; digging into the knotted places. “Thank you.”

“Any time.” She leaned back. “You want to help me with setting our budgetary priorities for the 2001-2002 fiscal year?”

“God, no.”

“Thought I’d ask while the goodwill ran hot.”

He left feeling a little better. He almost missed that the light was still on in Editing.

But as he passed, he glanced in, and the blinds weren’t pulled. Natalie and Dan were sitting together, talking intensely. Dan kept gesturing, and Natalie was gesturing back. Casey wasn’t entirely certain, but he thought a freeze-frame on one of the screens might have been a shirtless man wearing very small shorts and a military hat of some kind.

Part of him very badly wanted to loiter and listen.

He made himself keep walking instead.

Danny said nothing about any late-night talks with Natalie the next morning, and Casey kept a lid on it re having noticed their conversation, and they managed to keep working over the next few days. It was as normal as things ever were for them, which was to say that some kind of large exotic bird started building a nest on their roof and there was a very confusing conversation being had with Legal about their responsibilities in regard to endangered species. Casey’s understanding was that Legal had responded, as a department, by pointing out that they specialized in contract and television law, and none of them were overly familiar with the laws around large, odd-looking birds, and as such might require a little bit of time and research to have a firm position for the company to take.

“It’s not even nesting _season,_” said Dana mournfully. “I don’t _understand._”

Jeremy whispered, “Thespis.” She flipped him off.

“Confusion due to global warming,” said Kim. Everyone turned to look at her. “What? I watch educational programming.”

“Okay,” said Casey, “but I’m not hearing whether this affects our _show_ or not, and since we all still at least nominally _work_ here, I’m thinking that’s the important part. Am I right about that?”

“You dillweed.” Dana threw a wadded-up gum wrapper at him across the conference table. He dodged it easily. “The show should be fine. We may have some minor satellite issues.”

“We’re doomed,” said Will.

“And one vote of confidence from Will! Moving on. I said moving _on,_ Jeremy.”

Danny was still being reliably Danny, which meant that he was full of peculiar facts, endless thoughts on the viability of Darrell Nisen’s elbow and the future of the Rams, and questions about word etymology that Casey was not able to answer satisfactorily despite resorting to his massive Oxford English Dictionary that came with the magnifying glass in the case.

It was getting to be comfortable again. The fact that they were exposed to each other constantly in the work environment had to be the reason; you couldn’t stay awkward with someone when you spent twelve to fourteen hours out of any given day together in an enclosed space.

Which was why they were bickering companionably about the Olympic prospects for Victor Kolar, on their way to the six pm rundown, when the policeman arrived.

To be fair, he wasn’t so much a policeman as a man _dressed_ as a policeman, and to be particularly fair, he clearly wasn’t attempting to be a convincing policeman. The sequins on his hat were one tip-off. Once Casey finished blinking at him in confusion, Casey registered the three men behind him. His compatriots were, in order, a construction worker in a flimsy see-through plastic vest, someone masquerading as a Navy officer, and a final gentleman wearing a cowboy hat that matched his chaps. At least he was wearing jeans under them. Well, Casey thought they were probably jeans. They seemed unusually tight.

“_Run,_” hissed Danny, putting his own suggestion into practice, and Casey took off after him.

“I got us all a present!” Natalie sang out brightly in the distance. “Who wants a lap dance? Jeremy?”

“No!” they heard Jeremy’s pained shout.

“Me!” yelled Kim.

“This is your fault!” whispered Danny to Casey as they took a blind left through a random office and came out the other side into a corridor.

“How do you figure that?” Casey muttered resentfully.

“If you hadn’t—” Danny gestured vaguely—“Natalie wouldn’t have a _plan!_”

“Oh, Jesus. You think this is part of her plan?” Casey gaped at Danny as Danny grabbed his wrist and yanked him further down the hall.

The warbling sound of a boom-box began to blare from the bullpen. They were still much too near.

“Obviously!” snapped Danny. “Please. Do you think any of those men are actually supposed to appeal to straight women?”

“I wouldn’t know!”

“She’s trying to overwhelm me with lust for their pert and shapely rear ends!”

“Hey!” But Casey’s indignation got lost as Danny wrenched open a door and shoved Casey inside, following seconds later.

Danny shut the door swiftly and silently, throwing them into total darkness. It reeked of Pledge.

“Is this a storage closet?” Casey whispered.

“Shh.”

Danny was still pressed against the door, ear up against the wood, listening carefully.

“How did you know this was here?”

“I said _shhh,_ Casey.”

The music got louder a second later, and Casey inched closer to the door to listen for it; it became easy to pick out the lyrics, once he realized a solid third of the crew was singing along to “It’s Raining Men.” The unmistakable aroma of Drakkar Noir penetrated the gaps in the door and mingled, nauseatingly, with the fresh lemon scent of the cleaning products.

Casey whispered in Danny’s non-door-occupied ear, “It smells like a middle schooler’s locker. I’m going to _die_ in here.”

And Danny—Danny shuddered, just barely.

He’d forgotten. Somehow, Casey had _forgotten_ what it had been like to kiss Danny, and now he was a hair’s breadth away from Danny, whispering into his ear. That small movement back-handed him with the unkind memory, and made it clear that Danny also remembered, in a very different way.

Casey took a hasty step back to cover his confusion and knocked something over. It rattled, badly, and Danny whirled around—probably getting ready to curse Casey for a clumsy oaf—but the door opened. Casey shrank further back into the shadows behind some plastic shelving, and it was Danny that the cowboy liberated, slinging a friendly arm around his neck and pulling him into the parade of debauchery.

Casey, standing forgotten in the dark, was paralyzed until the mass of celebrants had moved on, taking their boom-box and The Weather Girls with them.

He finally steeled himself to move to the door and peered around the frame. Kim, aloft on the shoulders of the faux policeman, was whooping with glee. Dave was dancing with the Navy officer, and appeared to be wearing the hat.

After a long few seconds of vacillation, Casey took a deep breath and stepped out of the closet to follow them.

The conga line, such as it was, had looped around to the bullpen again. Dana, beet-red and with a feather boa around her shoulders, was being encouraged to share a portable microphone with the construction worker. Kim was grinning lasciviously and trailing a fingernail over the bare chest of the policeman, who had somehow lost his shirt and was down to a vest that could certainly not be mistaken for bulletproof. Natalie watched the whole thing from a desk chair situated directly in front of them, with an understated yet satisfied smirk, like a modern and terrifying Sphinx.

Several men from the show were, to all appearances, getting into the spirit of the thing, cheering Dana on, applauding the strippers as one by one they yanked off their pants, which turned out to have Velcro in place of seams. The policeman winked at Dave, who whistled appreciatively. It wasn’t fair that Dave was so much cooler than Casey.

Dan was leaning against a desk, ankles crossed nonchalantly, with his arms folded and a small and rueful smile on his face.

Casey edged over to stand next to him. He tried to mimic the nonchalant leaning, but had a feeling he looked more like a badly stuffed elk than a cool guy, having a cool time.

Danny glanced over at him—and there it was, that look, the look that had fooled him: the glance up through the eyelashes, with the smile below it that Casey had been watching for over a decade. Danny smiled at other people like that, it was true. Or almost like that. Casey had always thought Danny reserved something special for him, an extra twinkle to the eye.

Casey found himself smiling unwillingly back, slowly unfolding his arms, reaching behind himself to put his palms flat on the surface of the desk. Danny lit up a little more.

If it wasn’t, somehow, the kind of moment he’d thought they’d had in the past, it was still a moment.

Danny turned back to watch the strippers. Casey couldn’t look away from Danny; there was glitter on the back of his neck, where, presumably, the cowboy had rested his arm.

Casey had just decided to mention the glitter to Danny when Isaac’s voice echoed through the bullpen, cutting easily through the music and the hubbub. “What is going _on_ here?”

To her credit, Natalie, who had climbed onto a table to perform backup vocals for Dana, didn’t flinch.

“Fun, sir.”

“Fun?”

The strippers, perhaps catching the change in mood, hastily switched off the boom box.

“Fun.”

Isaac, leaning on his cane, frowned at her. “Are you under the impression that we come to work to have _fun?_”

“No, sir.”

“Why on earth would you attempt to bring what I can only assume, based on their attire, are male exotic dancers, into our workplace?”

“To be fair,” called Danny, “she didn’t so much _attempt_ as _succeed._ I mean, they’re definitely here.”

“I did not ask you, Daniel.”

“Understood.” Danny nodded briskly a few times.

Natalie said, “It seemed like a good idea at the time?”

“Did it? Did it really?”

“Yes.”

“Well, loathe as I am to argue with your good ideas, I have to say I don’t think much of this one. Gentlemen, please do not take this as any kind of attack on either your profession or your artistry, and do make sure that this young lady pays you any fees you are owed, but this will mark the end of your performance here today.”

The Navy stripper saluted. Isaac visibly twitched.

The police officer, who seemed to be the boldest of the bunch, yelled, “Are you sure I can’t interest you in some individual attention, Papa Bear?”

And Isaac, who had been holding it together with his spot-on impression of a disapproving father figure, finally burst into laughter.

“Not today, young man,” he said, shaking his head and turning back towards his office. “Perhaps some other time.”

“All right! Have a good one!” shouted the stripper, and blew exaggerated kisses after him. But the others were retrieving the remnants of their pants, slowly covering toned muscles, much to the obvious dismay of more than a few staffers.

Natalie, after a few more words with the strippers, swung by Casey and Danny’s office.

“So,” she said, sticking her head in.

“Didn’t work,” said Danny without looking up from his script.

“That’s what you say _now,_” she caroled brightly.

“Natalie, I was not overcome with lust for _any_ of those strippers, regardless of their talent or their rock-hard abs.”

“So you noticed the abs!”

“Of course I noticed the abs. Their costumes, such as they are, are specifically designed to draw attention to said abs. Casey, back me up on this.”

“I am not part of this conversation, nor do I wish to be.”

“That’s the coward’s way out,” said Natalie.

“I have nothing to prove.”

Danny added, “Besides, did you notice how _short_ they all were? All of them! It’s a pattern.”

“So you’re saying you’d prefer a _tall_ man,” Natalie mused aloud.

“Leave.”

Natalie gave him the finger on her way out.

After she left, Casey said, “I’m tempted to apologize.”

“Don’t.”

“It _is_ technically your fault for ever telling her anything.”

“I’m not sure I’d go that far.”

“Oh, but I would.”

“I know you would.” Danny cracked a smile, though he still didn’t look up from where he was scribbling notes in pencil in the margins.

Of _course_ the rare and badly confused birds dive-bombed the strippers outside the building. Of course.

“There might be a lawsuit,” said Dana, who looked extremely tired. “If it scars.”

“Doesn’t workman’s comp cover that?”

“Who knows, Casey. Who knows.”

“I bet it was the glitter,” said Danny. “I bet they saw the glitter and they went right for it.”

“You’ve got some on your—” Casey reached towards Danny as if to brush it off his neck, but stopped himself in time. Danny looked up at him, face sliding into unreadable blankness for a moment, before nodding.

“Thanks.” Danny blinked, glancing away. “I’ll wear a coat. Or wash it off, or whatever.”

“Yeah. That’s the smart way to do it.”

Casey ran into Natalie on their way out that night.

“Oh, hey,” she said. “How’s it going?”

“How’s it going? Natalie, you brought _strippers_ to our _office,_ that is the only thing anyone will be talking about for days.”

“Fine, don’t appreciate my attempt at small talk. That was the best I had. It’s been a long day.”

“Yes, because, I feel compelled to repeat, you brought strippers to our office.”

“No thank you for trying to solve your problem?”

“No! I am very specifically not thanking you! One might even interpret what I am doing as the opposite of thanking you.”

“Pshaw,” she said airily. “When my plan bears fruit, you’ll thank me.”

“Natalie…” He sighed, and she turned to him with raised eyebrows. “Thank you for caring. But I really don’t think we need a plan. I don’t think a plan is going to accomplish anything here besides annoying Danny.”

She tilted her head to one side, like an ominous little sparrow. Then she shrugged a shoulder. “Maybe annoying Danny is enough for me.”

He laughed out loud and pulled her into a hug, and she gave him a friendly backslap before stepping on his toe with her heel.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“Being so obstinate. Have _faith_ in the plan, Casey. You gotta _believe._”

“I believe you’re crazy!” he called as she headed for the street while he went on towards the parking garage.

“Good night, sad lonely man!” she yelled back.

The security guard gave him a dirty look. Great.

Kim’s birthday came around. Casey was invited to the party, which was at a hip and happening club.

“You _cannot_ call it hip and happening,” said Natalie severely. “I mean it, Casey.”

“I won’t!”

“You have to at least pretend to be cool.”

“I would like to call your attention to my innate coolness.”

“You have no such thing.”

“She’s right,” said Danny from his side of the office. He was dangling off the couch upside-down, staring at a half-page of copy he’d been struggling with for an hour. “You are so profoundly uncool that if coolness were measured on a scale, you’d be in the negatives. Like the Fahrenheit of cool.”

“Fahrenheit _does_ measure cool, given that cool is also a descriptor appropriate for temperatures.”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” said Dan triumphantly. “Nat?”

“He’s right. Casey, let’s try you not talking at all, okay? At least at this party. Just stand there with a drink and look distant and unapproachable.”

“That was pretty much my plan to start with, so I think we’re good on that score.”

Natalie saluted him sarcastically on her way out.

“It’s going to be a good party,” said Danny.

“Yeah. Kim’s friends are going to be there.”

“Lots of young, hip people.”

“Young, hip women.” Casey gestured broadly. “You can go to town. While I, apparently, am forbidden to say a single word.”

“Yeah, well, would you want to?” asked Danny, suddenly intent on his script. He was holding it so close to his face Casey couldn’t even see his eyes.

“Maybe! I don’t know. It would depend on whether any of them could hold up their end of a conversation.”

“See, you’re picky like that.”

“Of course I am. Say what you will about Lisa—”

“—and you know I will—”

“—she _was_ magna cum laude with a degree in Philosophy, and that’s not exactly easy to come by.”

“At _Michigan?_ Please.”

“Okay, so it was a state school, but still. You’re such a snob, Mr. Ivy League.”

“You would be a thousand times worse than I am if you’d gone Ivy and we both know it. What are you going to wear tonight?”

Casey frowned. “I don’t know. This?”

“You’re going to wear _jeans_ to Les Printemps?”

“You always go too far when you pronounce French, you know that?”

“There’s no such thing. I have it from reliable sources.”

“You don’t even _speak_ French.”

“I speak a little of the Francais,” Danny lied.

“No, you do not.”

“Fromage. Pamplemousse.”

“Great, you can order the ever-popular cheese and grapefruit platter.”

“Anyway, you’re going to look like a tool in that.”

“Fine. What do you think I should wear?”

“Wear a sport jacket with some nice slacks.”

“So a suit?” Casey frowned. A suit seemed like too much.

“No. A suit is too stuffy. You gotta have a sport jacket that doesn’t match but does coordinate.”

“You’re insane.”

“You need to go home and change before the party.”

“Or borrow something from Wardrobe.”

“Don’t borrow it. Monica will kill you. You _will_ spill something on it.”

“_Fine._ God.”

“And make sure it coordinates.”

“Does Dana take you shopping with her?”

“Many women do. They find my masculine eye helpful in making their choices.”

“Your masculine eye?”

“You know. A certain sensibility I bring to the equation.”

Casey rolled his eyes. “Sure.”

“Casey—” Dan said, just as the door to their office opened.

Dana said, “Dan, what’s the dress code for tonight? Natalie won’t tell me. She just keeps saying I should wear that leather vest from the bachelorette party last year.”

Les Printemps, despite being a hip and happening place, or perhaps because of that, was too dark, too close, smoke-filled, and full of unbearably boring people.

Casey _tried._ He did try. He met some people, shook hands, smiled, and listened to several stories about how bad the traffic had been. He tried not to think longingly of how much better his night would have been spent at home, sitting on the couch, re-reading something from Dickens or watching a rerun of _All in the Family._

“So how do you know Kim?” he asked the third single woman who said hi, Deirdre or Daphne or Delphine, who had dark hair and a nice smile.

“We went to college together,” said D.

“Really? What did you major in?” It was inane, but God, all of the conversation here was inane. There were drapes and jangling curtains of metal rings and not enough places to sit down. His feet were killing him. The music was too loud.

“Kim studied film, of course, but I studied literature.”

“That’s fantastic,” he said, a glimmer of hope igniting. “Anything in particular?”

She laughed, sounding a little self-conscious. “Well, French literature, actually. I did my senior project on Proust.”

“Recherche a les temps perdu?”

“You know it?” she asked, brightening.

“I do! I took a little French in college, you know. I have to confess I didn’t make it through Proust in the original, but I did enjoy the translation.”

She sat up straighter on the couch they were sharing, smiling. “Did you ever read any of the others?”

“In the series? No. God. I hate to admit it, but I started _Les jeunes filles_ and then I stalled out. It didn’t feel as well-crafted as the original.”

“You should have stuck it out! It gets better in _Sodom et Gomorrah._”

“Oh, I’m sure it does.”

She smacked his arm lightly. “Not like that!”

“It was how many thousands of pages? I think I can be forgiven for not reading to the end.”

She was laughing. “Maybe. It’s possible.” 

“Look,” said Casey, leaning forward, “I may have not caught your full name when we were introduced, but I’d like to know it.”

“Daphne Duncan.” She beamed up at him.

“Daphne, do you like sports?”

“Enough to watch your show.”

“Every night?”

“Maybe.”

“I suppose I’ll accept that answer.”

She had a really nice smile. The corners of her eyes crinkled up; it looked genuine. “You’d better accept that answer, because it’s the only one I’ve got.”

They talked for a little bit longer—she liked Flaubert, and Octave Mirbeau, about which he had mixed feelings, but she also boasted an encyclopedic knowledge of men’s soccer players that he was starting to suspect might be in some way sexually motivated.

“—anyway,” she said, “you have to feel _something_ for a man who can fake an injury like that, even if it’s only crushing contempt.”

“You should come with me to a game sometime and explain how it works.” He grinned at her.

“Maybe I should. Quick question, though,” she said. “Why did Kim tell me that under no circumstances should I date you, because you’re totally insane?”

“Kim’s just jealous that I know more about Camus than she does.”

Daphne laughed. Her hair was kind of short, and spiky on top, not unlike a guy’s; he’d thought at first she might be a lesbian, but she was laughing _way_ too much at his jokes to not be flirting, he thought. Probably. He was funny, but he wasn’t _that_ funny.

“Yeah, Kim was never that into the French. She preferred getting philosophical about—well, Kinsey, if you get my drift.”

“Kinsey?”

“_Alfred_ Kinsey?”

“Oh. _Oh._ Really?”

“Yeah, she did a minor on Human Sexuality. Always interesting at parties.”

“I bet.”

“You don’t have to make it sound like a bad thing.”

“I wasn’t! I’m not. Not on purpose. It’s just not something I’m used to hearing about. Kim has not shared her thoughts on the subject with me.”

“Yet. Get her drunk enough and she will.”

“Hmm, how many drinks do you think she’s had tonight?” Casey glanced Kim’s way, waggling his eyebrows, and Daphne cracked up.

“Either not enough to talk sexology or too many and she’s going to go home and sleep.”

“So what I’m hearing is, Kim has hidden depths, and you’re not so put off by her warning that I couldn’t talk you into seeing a game with me.”

“That might be a fair assessment.”

“Ahem!”

Everyone looked up. It was a penetrating _ahem,_ and of course it was Danny, standing on a table and hitting the side of a martini glass with a cocktail fork, loudly enough to be heard in Massachusetts. “A toast to our fine friend Kim, who has made it through yet another year in one piece, exceptionally beautiful _and_ talented, and beloved by all!”

There was a general roar of approval while Kim smirked fondly up at Danny.

And Casey, looking at Danny, with his shirt collar open and a wide, sweet, lopsided smile on his face, felt everything all over again.

There might not, in fact, be an easy way out of this.

“Kim, you’ve been a magnificent colleague, and it’s been our honor to work with you. Also to enjoy your keen fashion sense.”

There was a ripple of laughter.

“To Kim!” yelled Danny, and everyone in their immediate vicinity raised whatever glass they were holding and took a drink.

Casey looked back at Daphne.

“What do you think about Manchester?” he said.

Daphne didn’t end up going home with him, but she did leave him her card, with her number scribbled on the back. She was apparently a quality control executive of some kind at a company he didn’t recognize. The card had a small, tasteful logo and gold embossing.

He sat, peering down at it in the gloom of the club, after she left. There was a thump as Danny sat down next to him on the violet pleather of the couch.

Danny threw an arm behind Casey carelessly. “Meet a nice girl?” He nodded at the card.

“Yeah, think so.”

“Good for you.” Danny’s voice was off. Casey looked over at him, but Danny was staring out over the crush of people. “I think Kim’s going to leave with that guy.”

“Which one?”

“The orange sweater.”

“Oh, good God.”

“I know, I know, but she seems to like him.”

“Wait, isn’t that the construction guy?”

“Which?”

“The stripper!”

“You know,” said Danny, squinting into the gloom of the club, “I think you’re right. It’s harder to recognize him when I can’t see his abs.”

Casey leaned back, sighing, and found himself brushing up against Danny’s arm. He didn’t move right away. Neither did Danny.

“It’s probably just as well,” said Casey.

“What is?”

“That we didn’t. Happen.”

“Why?” Danny looked deceptively calm, but to someone who knew him, the way he was holding himself was a highly regulated stillness. The artificial calm of a man in a chair at an anchor desk, who would only move to pretend to scribble some notes on his script.

“Somebody’d figure it out. Sooner or later. And then it would be a whole thing.” Casey laughed, even though it wasn’t really funny. “Which one of us do you think they’d fire? They wouldn’t stop at one, would they. It’d be both of us.”

Danny took a breath and then said nothing.

“Bobbi could get her big break,” Casey added. “Maybe they’d bring Kelly in.”

“Stop it,” said Danny.

“It’s fine.” Casey sat forward again and rubbed the back of his neck. “Since it’s not happening. See? Then it can be fine.”

“You thought about it?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Before?”

Casey nodded.

“And you were still going to…” Danny trailed off, shaking his head, still not looking at Casey. “This show is your _life._”

“Yeah, for now.”

“What do you mean?”

“It wasn’t always, was it? We had shows before. If push came to shove I figured I could find something else. Writing. I could write for Saturday Night Live, they like big white geeks over there.”

“Casey,” said Danny.

“And it won’t _be_ my life forever, probably. Don’t get me wrong. QVN is doing us a lot of favors. But we’re up against ESPN, and even if we make it to number two, we’re never going to make it to number one. You have to have thought about that. So what, do we stay number three? Or number two, if we’re that lucky and that good? Do we stick our heads in the sand and pretend we’re never going to get canceled and have to look for something else?” Casey shrugged. “The show’s important to me, but it’s not everything. It can’t be everything, or else what do I have when it goes away?”

Danny stood up. “I have to get some air.”

“Danny!”

Danny was walking away. Casey realized, belatedly, that he might have been a touch insensitive.

He sighed. He leaned back, contemplating whether it was worth getting another drink or whether he should just leave. He was fairly certain he should just leave.

Casey’s cellphone rang; he dug it out of his jacket pocket. “Yeah?”

“You realize she looks like me,” said Danny.

“What?”

“Her name is _Daphne_ and she looks like me.”

“_What?_”

“I’m just saying.”

“She does not look like you!” said Casey indignantly, even as a cold sweat broke out on his forehead. Short, spiky, dark hair. A nose he’d probably describe as _patrician_ if pressed. Wide, expressive mouth, with a crooked smile. “And the name is a coincidence!”

“Right.”

“She likes soccer and French literature. We were having a good time.”

“Oh, she likes _soccer. _Fine, you can compare French literature all you like.”

“You’re a real piece of work, you know that? You could at least pretend to be happy for me for more than—” He checked his watch. “Five minutes!”

“I thought you should know,” said Danny. “In case things got awkward.”

“It seems like you’re trying to make things awkward.”

“Maybe I am.” Danny sighed gustily. “I’m just trying to save you from yourself, here.”

“Where _are_ you?”

“Standing outside the club.”

“You should go home.”

“Don’t wanna.”

“What _do_ you want to do?”

“I don’t know. I have some existential malaise.”

“Isn’t it existential angst?”

“It can be malaise. There’s no reason it can’t be.”

“Do you want to get a drink somewhere else?” said Casey, which was not an unusual thing for him to say. And there was, perhaps, some relief in this: that in saying it now, there was no layer of subtext, nothing hidden that needed to be side-stepped or otherwise avoided.

Danny hummed a couple of bars from something Casey didn’t recognize. “Maybe.”

“Kim left, so the party’s winding down.”

“With the stripper in the orange sweater?”

“I believe she did leave with the stripper in the orange sweater.”

“Assuming we’re correct and that is in fact the same guy.”

“He seems to like orange.”

“Let’s get a drink,” said Danny. “That weird bar down by Ken’s.”

“I still can’t believe you have a friend named Ken,” said Casey, getting to his feet. “I have to get my coat.”

“Meet me out here.”

“Right.” Casey hung up and immediately knocked over a drink with his elbow, and spilled something sticky (but blessedly clear) on himself. A few minutes later when he stepped out onto the sidewalk, Danny was waiting, chin tucked into his scarf.

“It’s cold out here,” whined Danny. The weird bar by Ken’s was only a few blocks away; they started to walk. “It is stupidly cold. Toe-freezingly cold. Think I’ll get frostbite? Gangrene?”

“It’s winter, and no. It’s winter in New York, not the Arctic. But it _is_ winter.”

“You say that as though you’re giving me new information.”

“For all I know, I am. You certainly seem surprised by the predictability of the elements.”

“The _elements?_”

“Jeremy would have appreciated my meteorologically-based sarcasm.”

“Casey,” said Danny abruptly, “you said you wouldn’t trade working with me for anything.”

“Yeah.”

“But you were already thinking about leaving.”

“What?”

“You had that thing. After the divorce.”

“Oh. Yeah. I wasn’t _serious,_ Danny, God. I was… I wanted you to talk me out of it.”

“Which I did, for the record.”

“You did indeed.”

“With a stirring, inspirational speech.”

“I do not deny that it was inspirational.”

“They wanted you gone. They were talking about firing you.”

“I know.”

“Did you know they offered me a new partner?”

“No.”

“They were insistent. I turned them down flat.”

“Like I said.” Casey shrugged. “Wouldn’t trade it.”

“For anything?”

“For anything.”

“What about—” Dan waved loosely at the two of them.

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“It’s closer,” said Casey. “We’d be—closer.”

“Than working together? Twelve hours a day, almost every day? How do you _get_ closer than that?”

Casey snorted a laugh, caught off-guard. “Jesus Christ, Danny, do we need to have a talk about the birds and the bees?”

“Or the bees and the bees, in this case.”

“Although the vast majority of bees are female.”

“Fine, God. The birds and the birds.”

“Well, colloquially—”

“Shut up.” Danny squinted down the street. The air was so cold his breath was coming in little cottony puffs, leaking out above his scarf. “You know what I mean. Would it be worth it, if that was the trade-off?”

“Danny.”

“And if there wasn’t a trade-off. Then we go from twelve hours to, what, sixteen waking hours, and is that worth it? Is that worth the risk?”

“I’d be a lot more comfortable if we went back to making fun of you for not realizing it was going to be cold in New York in December.”

“Hey,” said Danny, a little smirk at the corner of his mouth, “big words from a guy who lost his damn mind the first time he saw _Hawaii_ in December.”

“_You _shut up.”

“Seriously, though.”

“You’re asking if it would have been worth it?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know.”

“But you still—”

“There’s no way _to_ know except to try.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Huh.” Danny half-heartedly kicked a stray rotting tennis shoe out of his way.

“Let’s go back to your confusion about the Earth’s seasonal cycle, though.”

“Look, I said it was cold.”

“You did indeed. Almost as if you were surprised by that fact.”

“The world’s full of surprises lately,” muttered Danny.

“Please. I still can’t believe you were _surprised._”

“I was very surprised!”

It was easier to joke about it like this—on the busy Manhattan streets in the nighttime, surrounded by jostling people who didn’t give a damn about their conversation, and without ever having to say the words. “Yeah, I got that impression, but come on. Who did you talk to who _didn’t_ think I was right?”

“…nmn,” said Danny.

“What was that?”

“No one.”

“There you go.”

“See, what is _that_ supposed to mean, there you go? Where _do_ I go with that?”

“You don’t have to go anywhere, except to the weird bar where they sell Blue Hawaiians in pineapples.”

“You gonna get one?”

“Do I look like somebody with a death wish?”

“I doubt the pineapples are toxic.”

“That much blue dye could be. Is it radioactive? It looks a little on the radioactive side. Maybe I should have brought a Geiger counter.”

“Maybe it’ll give you superpowers.”

“The only superpower I need is the ability to get a cab in Manhattan.”

“You didn’t _want_ a cab. You wanted to walk.”

“I was speaking more generally.”

“Sure you were.”

They bickered congenially about the merits of cabs versus walking versus the subway (“obviously _you_ hate it, Casey, you’ve never been accused of being a populist” parried with “so _you_ enjoy the front-row tickets to somebody else’s hangover?”) and moved on to other, equally inconsequential topics. Before they knew it they’d arrived at the bar, which, Casey thought, squinting at the partially burned-out sign, was either “Heaven” or “Heathen.”

Danny’s mood had changed. He was no longer pensive, much less sulky, and he bought their first round without comment.

“You know what’s great?” Danny mused aloud, staring at the television in the corner above the bar, which was set to the news.

Casey frowned up at the screen. “Civil war in the Congo?”

“No. Why would that be great? You know what, don’t answer that, it’s just going to highlight how ill-prepared you were for that question.”

“Fine. What’s great?”

“Having a drink in good company.”

“Where do you find this company, and how do I ditch you for them?”

“See,” said Danny, cocking finger-guns at him sideways, “you say hurtful things like that, but you know and I know we’re the best company to be found in this great and glittering city.”

“If you’re going to keep talking like that, I’m going to need a bigger pineapple.”

Christiane Amanpour’s face, somber and tilted so she was in three-quarters view (on her good side), came on the screen.

“Now there’s a woman.” Danny toasted her with his nuclear blue drink.

“I believe she is indeed a representative of the fairer sex.”

“Speaking of, how are things with Dana?”

“Dana?” Casey blinked, surprised. “She’s fine.”

“Yeah, but _between_ the two of you.” Danny was looking down at his drink, circling the glass over the bar in an odd gesture.

“Fine?”

“Casey.”

“I don’t understand the question.”

“The two of you always had that, that will-they-won’t-they thing going.”

Casey rolled his eyes, although, as Danny was still staring alternately at his drink and the television set, it was largely lost on him.

“Like Sam and Diane,” Danny added, as though what Casey lacked was _context._ “Or Moonlighting.”

“We used to do that.”

“Are you still doing it?”

“No.”

“Why not? She’s still great. She’s gorgeous.”

“She’ll always be great.”

“My point exactly.”

“I’m not convinced you had a point.”

“I had a point!”

“If you had a point, I think I’d know.”

“You’d never know if I had a point.”

“Doesn’t that defeat the entire purpose of point-having, if the audience isn’t aware of it?”

“It’s a stealth point,” announced Danny and slammed half the glass at once.

“If the point is that I should think about asking Dana out again, the answer is no. Emphatically, uncompromisingly, no.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’ve _tried_ that. Multiple times, as a matter of fact. And it just doesn’t—it doesn’t _jibe._”

“Is it the cut of your jib?” asked Danny just a little too solemnly to be serious.

“Shut up.”

“A jib can be recut.”

“Can it?”

“Can’t it?”

“What, exactly, is a _jib?_”

“Who can really say?”

“I thought you liked boats. Don’t you like boats?”

“Fine.” Danny blew a distracted raspberry; the television had shifted to telling them about how Daniel Sedin’s injury was doing, although none of it was news to them. “The jib is a secondary sail, an auxiliary sail. It stabilizes the mainsail.”

“And it can be recut?”

“How should I know? I’ve never tried.”

“You’re so full of crap,” said Casey, but he couldn’t help smiling. “Anyway, my jib doesn’t need recutting. It’s a fine jib just as it is.”

Danny did shoot him a quick glance at that. “I suppose it’ll do.”

“And look. Dana had plenty of chances at my jib.”

“Now I feel like we’ve wandered out of the spirit of the original usage, here.”

“We did try.” Casey took a sip from his drink (which was not, after all, in a pineapple; he did have standards). “It didn’t work, and the world didn’t end.”

“Hm,” said Danny, and took another long drink.

They didn’t say anything for a while, watching as the news cut to a local human interest story about a hero dog.

“See,” Danny said, shifting on his bar stool, “I think Sedin’s going to be a big fucking deal, though, and this injury—”

“You thought that about Waller, too, though—”

“Do you think I’m wrong?”

“Well, no,” said Casey, and relished how they plunged back into nit-picking the performances of men who got paid much, much more money than themselves.

He never did call Daphne. The name was what did it, really; the name was too much. Dana, Danny, Daphne.

“You _can,_” Natalie was saying with a degree of intensity that bordered on the histrionic.

“Can what?” asked Casey, pausing in the door of Isaac’s office, where for some reason Danny and Natalie were, while Isaac wasn’t.

“Nothing!” said Danny very loudly.

“Okay,” said Casey slowly. “I’m looking for Isaac.”

Danny and Natalie were facing each other across the room, both looking a little wild-eyed.

“He’s not here.” Natalie folded her arms across her chest aggressively.

“I’d noticed that. I know it may seem foolish, looking for a man in his office, but this is where I started out.”

“He’s in Dana’s office,” contributed Danny.

“See, now, there’s the kind of information for which I was still holding out hope.”

Natalie scrunched up her face at him in a sarcasm that needed no words.

“I’m going to go there and talk to him,” Casey added, backing out of the room, not taking his eyes off them.

“Wait!” said Natalie.

“What?”

“Don’t wait,” said Danny.

“Zip it, Dan. Casey, settle an argument for us.”

“I really don’t think I want to do that,” said Casey dubiously.

“Bawk-bawk-bawk,” said Natalie in a poor imitation of a chicken.

“If you’re implying that I’m a coward, I will gracefully cede the field.”

“You’ve never gracefully ceded anything in your life,” said Danny.

“Fine, I’ll gracelessly retreat from the field.”

“Do people change?” asked Natalie.

Casey looked back and forth between them. He had the strong sense that this was some kind of trap, or perhaps a test. He had very little desire to answer the question. But Danny was watching him, too, with a speculative look on his face, as if now that Natalie had posed the question Danny was also invested in the answer.

“Is this a test?”

“Maybe. Answer the question.”

“I don’t know,” Casey said. Danny rolled his eyes. “Maybe that sounds like a cop-out, but it’s true.”

“It sounds exactly like a cop-out,” said Natalie unhelpfully. “Probably because it is one.”

“What do you want, an exact accounting? We’re—_allowed_ to change, I guess. Or forced to, by time and circumstance.”

“Wow, what an unsatisfying conclusion.”

“Do you _want_ me to start quoting German philosophers? I could, you know.”

“It was his minor,” Danny said to Natalie, _sotto voce._

“I am profoundly unimpressed.”

“Hey,” Danny said to Casey, ignoring Natalie for a perilous minute, “are you going to do the squash thing tomorrow?”

“Yeah.” It was his regular squash day. Danny knew that.

“Mind if I join you?”

“What?”

“The possibility of change, etcetera.”

“You’re gripped by a new and powerful urge to play squash?”

“I might be.”

“Fine. I’ll pick you up on the way.”

Natalie made a choking noise. Casey turned to her, frowning in concern, but she cleared her throat. “I’m fine! I’m fine.”

She did seem to be making over-exaggerated waggling eyebrows at Danny, but Casey figured it was just as well to let sleeping assistant executive producers and part-time madwomen lie, so he edged out the door before either of them could say anything else.

He picked up Danny the next day before work, honking vigorously as Danny ran out of his building and sliding back into traffic as Danny buckled his seatbelt.

“You could ease off on the horn,” grumbled Danny. “It’s squash, not an appointment with the Prime Minister.”

“You think the Prime Minister plays squash?”

“Depends on which one.”

“Blair? Or Chrétien?”

“I could see Blair playing squash. I feel like Chrétien might be a little weak in the knees for it these days.” Danny crammed his gym bag between his feet.

“Or we could go back into historical PMs.”

“Thatcher?”

“Would have killed us both at squash.”

“Possibly literally.”

“She does seem a touch murderous.”

“A certain glint in the eye.”

“Seriously,” said Casey, “why are you doing this?”

Danny shrugged, twisting to look out the window. He was wearing a generic gray sweatshirt, sleeves pushed up to his elbows, and Casey kept noticing a tuft of hair sticking up at the back of his head. “Turning over a new leaf. Maybe I’ll be a fitness freak.”

“You already play basketball.”

“Maybe squash is better for my health.”

“Danny…”

“I’m trying new things,” said Danny with a finality that was undoubtedly supposed to preclude further questioning.

At the gym Casey didn’t need to change, having come in his gym clothes; Danny stripped off his sweatshirt to reveal an equally generic and gray t-shirt, and was already in baggy basketball shorts. Casey kept his eyes on his locker while Danny wedged his things in and turned the rented key, letting it snap back against his wrist on the plastic coiled wristband.

“These things remind me of Scrunchies,” remarked Danny, snapping it against his wrist again.

“Come on, let’s go watch me clean the floor with you,” said Casey, and Danny threw back his head and laughed.

The squash court echoed as they got into position. Casey served first, going easy on Danny. The ball came back at him with lightning speed and annoying precision; after that he abandoned his caution and started hitting to Danny as if he were one of Casey’s regular partners. (He’d called Greg to cancel the day before, and Greg had said, “Oh, shit, I forgot, I have a dentist’s appointment,” so that had been a nice coincidence.)

He was well on his way to eking out a respectable but not overwhelming victory when he froze. The ball nailed him dead in the center of his forehead and bounced off, but that occupied only a small sliver of his attention.

“Case?” said Danny with cautious concern.

“That fight!”

“What?”

“With Natalie! That wasn’t some kind of—that was about _this!_”

“What, squash?” asked Danny, but with an evasive edge that told Casey he was on to something. “You got me, we were in a no-holds-barred grudge-match over the merits of various forms of—”

“It was about—” Casey glanced around them to be sure the room was private—“_sexual orientation,_” he hissed in an unfortunately sibilant whisper.

Danny rolled his eyes expressively.

“You can’t _change_ that! There are whole exposés dedicated to the topic!”

“What, and you’ve read them?”

“Enough of them! And summaries of them! As reviews,” Casey added, undone by his customary honesty. “In magazines.”

“You mean the _New Yorker_, don’t you? I can’t believe you read that crap.”

“You can’t just,” said Casey, flinging his hands up in the air. “I can’t _believe_—was it Natalie? It was Natalie, wasn’t it.”

“I can’t even tell what you’re talking about.”

“Well, of course, if it was Natalie it was misguided.”

“Casey.”

“I know she has a plan but that doesn’t mean you have to talk to her about it!”

“_Serve the ball,_” said Danny through gritted teeth.

“You can change whether you play squash or basketball but that’s as far as it goes!”

“Maybe I like squash!” Danny shouted. “Maybe I can like squash _and_ basketball! Maybe it’s not one or the other, maybe I don’t know whether I like squash until I _try _squash!”

Casey stared at him for what felt like a few thousand years before flinging down his racquet and walking out.

Danny, who had never in his life let Casey have the last word, grabbed Casey’s racquet up off the floor and followed him out, talking now in a fierce, hostile undertone.

“_You_ like basketball! You like basketball just _fine!_ Hell, you _married_ basketball, and then after you divorced basketball you were seeing Sally and kept chasing Dana and pardon _me_ for not somehow subliminally intuiting that you like _squash!_”

“Fuck you.” Casey shoved the door to the locker room open harder than he needed to. The door made a satisfyingly loud noise, and the handful of other guys glanced up, raising their eyebrows.

“We are not done,” Danny snapped at him under his breath as Casey banged the door of his locker open.

“You can get a cab to the station,” Casey informed him loftily, and then left while Danny was still fumbling with his key.

Of course, Danny being Danny, he just abandoned the key and his gym bag and was hot on Casey’s tail as Casey stormed into the parking garage. Despite Casey’s best attempts not to acknowledge his existence in any way, he still managed to get into the car.

“Did you not lock the door? Goddamn it, Danny!”

“Maybe,” said Danny, sliding in on his side.

“Get out!”

“No.”

“I’m not going _anywhere_ with you in this car.”

“You wrote Dana like five hundred letters.”

“What?” said Casey, startled and annoyed.

“When you had that whole thing for her. You wrote so _many_ letters.”

“Shut up.”

“I’m just saying.” Danny spread his hands. “Zero letters, here.”

Casey inhaled deeply through his nose. “Danny, did you _want_ a letter?”

“It wouldn’t have killed you!”

“It might have! It still might. I might have some kind of aneurysm right here!”

“You got her flowers.”

_“Did you want flowers?_ Was _that_ the missing ingredient?” Casey mimed the top blowing clean off his head. “Because here I thought it was _breasts!_”

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“I don’t get it,” said Danny, tight around the mouth. “Why are you so _mad?_”

“Because you _tried_ squash. Remember? And you—” Casey couldn’t finish the sentence. He shook his head. “I’m done talking about this. Let it go.”

“I tried squash and _what?_”

“And you said, and I quote, ‘I don’t think I can do this,’ which, pardon me for saying so, sounded pretty fucking final.”

“Yeah, well, there are a lot of things I don’t know about! I’m a veritable repository of ignorance. Maybe I—look, I might have panicked, all right? I couldn’t wrap my brain around it.”

Casey closed his eyes for a second. “You can’t do this to me, Danny.”

“I’m not—” Danny waved around himself in frustration. “It’s not like this is something I’m doing _to_ you, Casey, I just hadn’t _thought_ about it before, okay, I hadn’t thought about it in this particular light.”

“And, what,” Casey said, half-sneering, “now that you’ve _thought_ about it in this particular light, you’ve changed your mind?”

“Maybe.” Danny drummed his fingers on the dash. “When it happened the first time around it caught me off guard, is what I’m saying, and after thinking about it some more, I think I would want to—” he motioned between them—“try it again.”

“You can’t talk yourself into wanting something. You either want it or you don’t.”

“And what if I’ve thought about and I think I want it?”

“You can’t do this to me,” Casey repeated, but with less conviction.

“You want to let me try?” asked Danny, softly.

There was a beat of silence. Casey ran a hand over his mouth.

“Because if you let me,” said Danny, turning to look at Casey—Casey couldn’t quite look at him yet—“I’m going to try.”

Casey inhaled, opening his mouth; he wanted to say something, but couldn’t find any words.

Danny sat in that fragile silence, like sitting inside a shell, the blown-out shell of an ostrich egg, white and vacant as a snowstorm, until he turned away from Casey again and coughed up a faint laugh. “Okay, right now probably wasn’t a good time to, uh, we didn’t even hit the shower—”

“Look,” said Casey, “it’s not—it’s not that simple, okay? It’s not that easy. It’s—I just put it all out there, and you said—and it’s. I can’t. I just can’t.”

Danny nodded. “Okay.”

Casey still felt like he was holding his breath. He concentrated on letting the air out, that pressurized feeling behind his breastbone. He was out of words.

Danny said, “So you’re not going to make it easy on me.”

“It’s not about that.”

“It sounds like it kind of is.”

“You don’t get it.”

“You’re right. I _don’t._ If I want to, and you want to—”

“Shut up, Danny. Just. Shut up, and go get your stuff, and I’ll see you at the studio, okay? You can take a cab. It’s going to be fine.” Casey hated how his voice sounded.

There was a moment, a long moment, where Danny didn’t move, and Casey wondered wildly what he would do if Danny _didn’t_ get out of the car; whether he’d do something incredibly dumb, like kiss him again.

Then Danny opened the door and got out, and Casey let out a breath he’d barely noticed he was holding.

He gave it a few seconds before he pulled out of the parking spot, and he found himself yelling at other drivers more than usual on the way back to his apartment.

When he walked into the building, showered and dressed for work, he had to keep tugging at the collar of his Henley.

It was _bad._ It was still-sweaty bad. It was pit-of-his-stomach bad.

His brain, which had always been a relatively reliable companion, had turned into a treacherous bastard and couldn’t stop picturing alternatives: what if Casey had said _yes, please, hurt me?_ What if Danny had taken him up on that insane and ill-advised offer?

He didn’t see Danny in their office, and he didn’t see Danny at the noon rundown. He was frowning around the table, ready to say something, when Dana said, “Danny called in sick. We’re getting Kelly Kirkpatrick tonight, so be nice, Casey.”

“I’m always nice!”

“Last time we had Kelly on you told her that her opinions about hockey were, if I’m remembering this correctly, ‘so bad she should throw them into a dumpster full of gasoline and set them on fire.’ Does that sound right?”

“No, but neither did she.”

“Be nice.”

“Fine,” he muttered. He waited until the rundown was over to sneak back to their office and call Danny.

His landline went to the answering machine. “You can’t avoid me forever,” said Casey. “I know you’re there. Pick up.” He gave it a beat; nothing. “Danny, pick up. Come on.”

He still didn’t.

“Fine. Okay. You’re going to be like this. Look, we have to be professionals about this, right? That means you still come in to _work._ I’m doing the show with Kelly tonight and she’s good, she’s great, but you can’t start flaking out on us.”

“Oh, fuck you,” said Danny, picking up finally.

“There you are.”

“It’s one day.”

“You didn’t call out when you broke your elbow.”

“I _barely_ broke it.”

“You were in a cast for _how_ long?”

“I’m taking _one lousy day,_ okay, do you think you can get off my back about it?”

“No, I don’t think I can.”

“See,” said Danny, voice dipping into that ugly register he reserved for their real fights, “I should have thought about this, shouldn’t I? I should have thought about what you’re _like_ when you’re like this.”

“Like what, exactly?”

“Being a pissy asshole.”

“I’m not—”

“The hell you aren’t. Look. I’m taking one fucking day, and tomorrow I’ll get up and come in and I’ll never mention it again, and everyone who didn’t have front-row seats for this shit-show will figure everything is going on exactly like it always did, where apparently I was in love with you and never knew about it, and you put up with me, and we’ll never kiss again, and we’ll go on like this until one or the other of us or both of us fall in love with someone else and get married and move on to other shows and drift apart until we only see each other every couple of years when Dana or Natalie has a big get-together, and we’ll smile and shake hands like strangers because that’s what we’ll _be,_ and I will _deal with it, _okay, I promise you, I’ll deal with it. But right now I’m not dealing with it. I’m letting myself have one shitty day to wallow a little, because the best thing that ever happened to me happened when I wasn’t paying attention, and I missed it. Because I’m in love with you and you _were_ in love with me, but, what, you’re not anymore? And you don’t even want to try. That’s what gets me. You don’t want to _try._ You were the one with all the big talk about not knowing until we tried it, and I’m saying, cool, let’s try, and you don’t want to anymore.” Danny had to pause for air.

Casey couldn’t have come up with something to say if there had been a gun to his head.

“So let me have this. Let me have a day to myself. I will show up tomorrow and I will be okay, and we’ll write some good fucking scripts until we stop, whenever that happens. But right now, I just want to be fucked up about it for a day.”

There wasn’t enough air in the room.

“The best—” said Casey, but he couldn’t make himself finish the sentence. Couldn’t finish the thought.

Danny sighed heavily. “Come on. Like you wouldn’t have been? Like you _aren’t?_ You know how I feel, all right, just—whatever.”

“Danny.” Casey’s heart was pounding.

“Tomorrow, okay, Case?” And Danny hung up.

Casey slowly lowered the receiver and stared at it blankly until it started beeping at him and he hung up hastily.

He sat there for a long time, until Kelly walked in and said, “Hey, are you ready to start on the script?”

“Hmm?” His head jerked up and he stared at her without really seeing her for a second. “Oh. Yes.”

“Did you catch whatever Danny has?” She frowned at him in concern. “I really can’t afford to get sick right now.”

“I don’t—probably not.”

“You don’t seem like you’re firing on all cylinders.”

“Yeah, no, I’m fine. Let’s do this.” He shook his head and tried to concentrate.

He couldn’t really remember that night’s show, later. He couldn’t remember the rundowns; he couldn’t remember the teasers. No one said anything to him about it sucking later, so maybe it didn’t. He couldn’t bring himself to care.

After the show he knew what he was going to do before he was consciously aware of it. His evidence for this was that he turned the wrong direction for his condo out of the parking garage. He was driving to Danny’s. He had no plan. He had no idea what he was going to say. His hands were sweating on the steering wheel, and he had to wipe them on his jeans.

He was in luck; the door to the building was just swinging shut as he got there so he caught it and didn’t have to buzz up to Danny’s apartment.

He knocked on Danny’s door. He was leaning forward, too hot in his leather jacket, when the door opened and Danny was on the other side of it, in an old Dartmouth sweatshirt with a ragged hole in the left elbow. Casey knew that sweatshirt. Casey knew Danny forwards and backwards and Danny could still surprise him, wasn’t that a hell of a thing?

“Don’t fall in love with someone else,” said Casey.

Danny’s mouth opened, and after a moment’s pause he stepped back from the door and waved Casey in.

Casey’s jacket was still too hot. He wasn’t sure whether he should take it off or not, whether they were going to talk or Danny was going to kick him out or what, what was going to happen.

Danny’s apartment was dim, the light streaming out from his bedroom. Casey had been in Danny’s bedroom a couple of times, knew what it looked like. Big solid modern-looking bed. En suite bathroom. There was music, something thready that sounded vaguely familiar. Danny must have been listening to music in the bedroom.

Danny was standing there, silently, hand on the doorknob, not moving even though he’d closed the door.

“You were in love with me?” said Danny to the door.

Casey nodded jerkily. “Yeah.”

“Are you still in love with me?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to try?”

Casey licked his lips. His mouth was dry. “Do you?”

Danny turned towards him from the door. Casey was still staring off into the hallway so it took him by surprise when Danny collided with him, but Danny had the situation under control: he put his hands on either side of Casey’s face and pulled him into a kiss.

Casey heard himself make a noise, soft and pained, and he reached for Danny, wrapping his arms around Danny’s waist, kissing and _kissing,_ this time, because Danny was kissing him. Danny was kissing him, and there was no hesitation, no pulling back. He pulled Danny in closer and Danny went, and it was insane, it was wonderful, he could smell Danny and he’d always wanted this; he couldn’t remember a time before he’d wanted this. Danny’s fingers were wrapped around the back of his neck, holding him for the kiss. He opened his mouth, gasping, and Danny’s tongue traced a soft figure eight on the tip of his own tongue, and he was so fucking _hard_ and there were fireworks going off under his skin.

Danny kissed like a _boss._ Casey had suspected, Casey had, after all, seen him kiss Rebecca once or twice, the women before her, women who had made Casey briefly nervous. But now he was getting kissed like he’d never been kissed in his life, and his knees were weak. They were literally weak. He’d always thought that seemed like unforgivable hyperbole, but here he was, on the verge of falling down because he couldn’t think or breathe with Danny’s body up against his.

And Danny moved, just a little, in the right direction, and Danny was hard against him.

Casey sagged into Danny’s arms. There was so much _relief_ in this, and fear, at the same time, like the first time Casey had ever done a high dive; like the first time he’d unsnapped a girl’s bra, or the split second at his first college meet when he realized that he was going to stick the landing.

Danny hadn’t _stopped_ kissing him. Danny was still kissing him like kissing was what Danny had been made for, which, on reflection, was a theory with some real merit to it. His lips were so soft. Casey took the lower one between his teeth, not biting, just to hold it, just to marvel at it. Danny breathed in through his nose sharply and his hips hitched against Casey.

Casey let go of Danny’s lip and kissed him, and pulled back just enough to speak. “I’m still in love with you,” Casey said, or heard himself say. “I think I always will be, and maybe I’m wrong, I’ve been wrong before, but I think I’m right and I want to be right.”

“_Good._” Danny’s voice was a revelation, fierce and bright. His eyes were wild, alight with a magnificent joy, and he wasn’t smiling but there was a smile in his voice. Then he did grin, baring his teeth. “I want you to be right, too.”

Casey kissed him again.

Danny slid one hand into the back pocket of Casey’s jeans and, after a pause to establish whether that was permitted, gave him an open-handed firm press and squeeze. Casey groaned into Danny’s mouth and Danny squeezed again, harder, and had to open his mouth to pant.

“Oh, Jesus,” said Casey faintly. Danny ducked his head and kissed the side of Casey’s neck, kissed along his jaw, down at an angle to his collarbone; Casey tilted his head back and wondered if he could get away with grabbing Danny’s ass, tantalizingly close to his hands. The whole thing was starting to feel like it was getting away from him, or had gotten away from him immediately and now he was just hanging on, along for the glorious ride.

“What do you like?” Danny said into his ear. He couldn’t think of what to say.

“Anything.”

Danny nodded, cocking his head to one side like he was thinking about something, one corner of his mouth turning up in a smile, and then he took a step back and Casey followed him without thinking, and then he was turning and half-pushing, half-heaving Casey onto the couch, like they were dancing, or wrestling, and Casey hit the couch with a thump. Danny came with him, landing with his knees to either side of Casey’s hips.

“Seriously.” Danny’s eyes were glittering in the half-light. “I’m going to touch you.”

“You gonna do it, or just talk about it?” Casey choked out around the delirious lust and profound terror overwhelming him.

Danny put his hand over Casey’s fly and cupped. Casey gasped out loud and pushed up into Danny’s hand without meaning to.

“Depends on if you ever shut up,” said Danny conversationally. He undid Casey’s fly and unzipped his jeans.

Casey’s head dropped back against the armrest. “Oh, my God,” he said thickly. Danny kept pressing him with the heel of his hand, rubbing up and down, and it felt amazing already.

After a few seconds Danny got Casey’s underwear jammed down around his hips and had his cock out, wrapping his hand around Casey’s cock, and Casey couldn’t look—had to look—at Danny’s face, looking for something, he didn’t even know what; regret, maybe, buyer’s remorse.

Instead he saw Danny staring intently at Casey’s cock like it was going to do tricks, and then Danny shocked him by leaning in, slowly, fractions of an inch at a time until Casey could feel Danny’s breath on his cock. Casey watched, entranced, as Danny kept jerking him off, and then between one pump of his fist and the next Danny opened his mouth and put it around the head of Casey’s cock.

“Jesus Christ!” Casey grabbed the back of the couch in one hand, fingers sliding off the leather, grabbed under the cushion with his other hand. He couldn’t come yet, he didn’t want to, he was mentally reciting every infielder he could think of starting with the Yankees but it wasn’t helping, because _Danny_ was _sucking his cock,_ and it had been a while since anyone had done that for him but it was Danny. It was Danny. It was Danny, and he hung on by his fingernails for a few strokes, Danny’s fist sliding up to meet his mouth, wetly kissing his lips, before Casey gave it up and let himself feel everything all at once. He came, hips jerking, and Danny didn’t pull back, kept his mouth there, swallowed, and that made him come _harder,_ and he couldn’t take it, his heart was going to give out. He kept coming and coming until he was dry, and he sagged back against the couch, gasping for breath.

There was a moment where all he could hear was his own heartbeat, pounding in his ears, but gradually that receded and he registered that Danny was still watching him. He closed his eyes—worked up the courage to open them again—and found Danny still watching his dick with apparent absorption.

“Hey, my eyes are up here,” he joked weakly, though on some level he knew it wasn’t a joke; he needed Danny to be there _with_ him; this _was_ about his dick but it wasn’t, it was about _them,_ and Danny needed to know that, needed to be on board with that.

Danny’s eyes flicked up to his and Danny smiled at him. It was a real one, startled and warm and full of affection, and Danny said, “So they are,” and lunged up to land on him heavily, chest to chest. Casey said _oooof_ and Danny laughed out loud, joyously.

With Danny’s face hovering above him, Casey leaned up to kiss him, and Danny hummed happily and leaned down to follow. He didn’t pause to worry about the taste in his mouth, so neither did Casey; it was absurd to think where he’d just been, what he’d been doing with that mouth. And the thought made his cock twitch again.

“So, uh,” said Danny, a few kisses later, flushed. “I’m not saying I’d, well. But.”

“You’d like to come, too?” asked Casey as dryly as he could manage.

“You know, now that you mention it—”

“How do you want it?” He couldn’t remember if he’d _ever_ asked anything like that before, but Danny had asked—Danny had cared—so he’d care, too, he’d ask, too.

Danny sighed, grinding his cock against Casey’s hip slowly, luxuriously. “Is it too much to hope for a blowjob?”

“I think we can accommodate that request,” said Casey grandly. Danny cracked up, but his face gradually stilled, lips parted in wonder, as Casey sat up and pushed him back into the couch.

Casey hadn’t blown anybody since freshman year of college, a couple of ecstatic, terrified times out in the boathouse with Jimmy from the crew team. He would not have ventured to bet on whether he was good at it or not; he hardly had the kind of experience to say. But Danny wasn’t complaining, and Danny had surely had much more recent, much more skilled blowjobs.

And Casey couldn’t help it, he found himself moaning quietly as he sucked, as he found his mouth conforming to the weight and the heat of Danny’s cock.

“Oh,” said Danny, sounding surprised. “Oh. Oh, Casey, oh.” It took on the quality of a chant. Danny’s fingers traced over Casey’s forehead, the top of his ear, veered down to rest against his lips without pressure while he sucked, while he let his tongue move.

He wrote it out with his tongue, and then again in French, _je t’aime, I love you,_ back to English, into German, Spanish. Danny came halfway through _te amo_ and the way his hand shook where he was still touching Casey’s lips made Casey wish vehemently he could have kept the capacity of a nineteen-year-old.

Casey drew back, looking up at Danny’s face. Danny was red, panting, a sheen of sweat—he was gorgeous.

Danny was looking down at him.

“Wow,” Danny said. His mouth seemed to be moving a little out of sync. He looked dazed. “Uh. Wow.”

“You said that already.”

“Damn it, you just sucked my brains out through my dick, okay, which _is_ a compliment, oh, damn it, I don’t know how to—I’m not going to be _cool_ right now, I can’t think!”

Casey burst out laughing. “Yeah, cool is not—”

But Danny cut him off, sliding his hands under Casey’s arms and lifting him bodily until they were twisting to lie on the couch again. Neither of them was willing to turn their back, so they ended up facing each other, Casey half-hanging off the side.

Danny was watching his face with a faint smile. He combed his fingers through Casey’s hair. Casey tensed, then relaxed into it.

“I’m,” said Danny. “I’m serious. I’m in—I love you. I love you _like that,_ you know? I thought I didn’t, but then.”

Casey kissed him. It shut him up.

In bed Danny was oddly cuddly, and by that Casey meant that he cuddled in odd ways: in his sleep he’d end up with his face mashed between Casey’s shoulder blades, or with a bent knee tucked possessively against Casey’s lower back. (Casey was a side sleeper, and liked to face the side of the bed. He did have to roll over at some point in the night and seeing Danny’s face in the glow of the streetlights where it penetrated the curtains hit something in him, like a pinball game, that lit up and flashed with complicated joy.)

When they went in to work the next day, Casey kept looking at Danny, hunting for something in his face, something new that would be a clue; something that would be visible. A mark, a brand. There was nothing.

Except how Danny would look up and _catch_ him looking, and a smile would spread over his face, and they’d stare at each other like a couple of weirdos until something broke the spell.

Casey found himself thinking, more than once, about the bed in his condo, which was _much_ larger than Danny’s couch and offered several additional tactical benefits. He mentioned this to Danny during a slow segment of the afternoon and Danny choked on his coffee, looking gratifyingly glazed for a while.

Natalie looked back and forth between them several times, rapidly, when she saw them, and her eyes narrowed. Casey held up a hand and hissed, “_Later,_” and for once in her life she subsided, nodding grudgingly.

She did catch him after the show, although that was challenging since both he and Danny were racing to get out as quickly as possible, with Casey’s large bed in mind.

“Was I right?” she said, her grip like iron on his elbow as she steered him towards Editing.

“I, uh,” he said, and the door shut behind them. “Yes.”

She let go of him long enough to pump her arm in victory. “I knew it!”

“I’m not convinced that you did.”

“I told you I had a plan.”

“Your plans are often terrible.”

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“I’m going to tell Danny you called him that. I don’t think he’ll be flattered.”

“I knew he was secretly in love with you.”

Casey looked at her—the light gleaming off her dark, smooth hair, the smile in her eyes—and he said, “Well, I didn’t, so I’m glad one of us was right.”

The door swung open. “Case?” said Danny. “You about ready to go?”

“Yeah, I just got caught by this force, it’s weird, short but magnetic—”

Natalie kicked him. “Go home and be freaky, my young friend.”

“Hey!” shouted Casey over his shoulder, but Danny was already dragging him away, and there were times and places for fighting the inevitable, but this wasn’t one of them.


End file.
